Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Oct 8, 2019
Date Accepted: Dec 31, 2019
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Research on Patients’ willingness to share information in Online Patient Communities
ABSTRACT
Background:
The online patient community has built a platform for communication between users, providing a new channel for people to acquire and share medical information and resources. In-depth study of users’ willingness to share information in online patient communities is of great significance for improving the information-sharing level of community patients and the long-term development of communities.
Objective:
From the perspective of both positive and negative utilities brought by information sharing to users, a model of factors affecting patients’ willingness to share medical information is built in this paper, based on influences caused by online information support and privacy concerns, to study the moderating function of disease severity and information sensitivity of different patients on their willingness to share.
Methods:
Questionnaires were used to collect sample data on users with experience in online patient communities, and structural equations were applied to empirically verify the model hypotheses.
Results:
Privacy concerns negatively affect patients’ willingness to share information; online information support could positively affect patients’ willingness to share; and information sensitivity negatively moderates the impacts of online information support on sharing willingness, while disease severity positively moderates the impact of privacy concerns on sharing willingness. Yet, neither the hypothesis that information sensitivity negatively moderates the impact of privacy concerns on sharing willingness nor the hypothesis that disease severity positively moderates the impact of online information support on sharing willingness is supported.
Conclusions:
Online patient community service operators are supposed to guarantee the security and confidentiality of users’ medical information through various measures, including a reasonable and safe user registration process, and reduce the privacy concerns of users. At the same time, the communities should accurately identify the patient’s demands for information and provide customized support services to improve the information-sharing level of community users via the necessary guidance and incentives.
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